New data from China shows Xiaomi and domestic smartphone brands squeezing out foreign phone makers

If anyone knows what’s going on in tech in China it’s Baidu, the country’s top search engine. Baidu’s new mobile report shows shifting trends among China’s smartphone users who visit some of the company’s numerous sites.

The most illuminating shift is how quickly domestic Chinese smartphones brands are squeezing out foreign phone makers. In the six-month period from the end of 2013 to Q2 2014, Baidu’s data shows that Chinese brands – led by Xiaomi – grew six percent in terms of their share of observed Android users in the country [1].

Xiaomi is the top Chinese brand, according to the visits that Baidu sees, followed by Huawei, Lenovo, Oppo, and Coolpad. Xiaomi grew by three percent in that time-frame.

This kind of data is not as reliable as sales numbers provided by brands, or even shipment figures issued by the likes of IDC or Canalys, but it still gives us a good snapshot of what’s happening in the country. Canalys’ most recent data corroborates Baidu’s numbers by saying that Xiaomi was China’s top phone company in terms of phone shipments in Q2, leaping ahead of the reigning Android king, Samsung.

Android invasion continues

Here are a few more highlights from Baidu’s presentation:

Daily active Android users in China grew 10 percent in the most recent quarter (though no absolute numbers are provided for this):

Most of China’s Android users are not very up to date, as they’re largely stuck on Android 4.2 or 4.1:

And the largest group is on phones with a 720p HD screen: